Reply to: £75 to change FRS category

[aoxomoxoa]

What a bargain! My accountant has offered to do the change for £150. Have decided to stay put on FRS anyway.

[jamesbrown]

Fixed price is now an option on the portal. However, I wouldn't recommend editing your contracts until the bugs are fixed.

Good to know. FYI, if you're registering a dividend and you're wondering why the screen doesn't disappear when you click "save", don't keep clicking "save" to see if it eventually disappears!

[TheFaQQer]

The portal is fine, but it's "optimized" for the average contractor, and it breaks down when you deviate from that model, hence the comments here about fixed price contracts, invoicing in foreign currencies, invoicing outside of the scope of UK VAT etc. You can never build the required flexibility into a bespoke portal without massively increasing the cost to all clients, which is why outsourced tools like FA are the future IMO. Why would a firm of accountants become a tech company? Difficult to do both well, in the long run, but it's understandable how it all started.

Fixed price is now an option on the portal. However, I wouldn't recommend editing your contracts until the bugs are fixed.

[Seahorse17]

Seems to me that encouraging IT techies to move away from the 14.5% consultancy to 12.5% other could be seen as aggressive avoidance. Moot point anyway, as most will be limited cost traders.

[MrMarkyMark]

The portal is fine, but it's "optimized" for the average contractor, and it breaks down when you deviate from that model, hence the comments here about fixed price contracts, invoicing in foreign currencies, invoicing outside of the scope of UK VAT etc. You can never build the required flexibility into a bespoke portal without massively increasing the cost to all clients, which is why outsourced tools like FA are the future IMO. Why would a firm of accountants become a tech company? Difficult to do both well, in the long run, but it's understandable how it all started.

Seems a fair few "proper" business's on here, I wonder what HMRC makes of it all

[jamesbrown]

I never tried FA but the 5 minutes a month it takes me to do all this doesn't really motivate me to change until the service is bad or the price gets too high.

The portal is fine, but it's "optimized" for the average contractor, and it breaks down when you deviate from that model, hence the comments here about fixed price contracts, invoicing in foreign currencies, invoicing outside of the scope of UK VAT etc. You can never build the required flexibility into a bespoke portal without massively increasing the cost to all clients, which is why outsourced tools like FA are the future IMO. Why would a firm of accountants become a tech company? Difficult to do both well, in the long run, but it's understandable how it all started.

[d000hg]

Totally. I feel for the old skoolers to a certain extent, as FreeAgent has been a game changer and it must be incredibly difficult to keep up.

It took me a while to take the plunge and move accountants (as I couldn't fault InTouch on service ) but to be honest their tool wasn't up to scratch and having to do my own invoices, dividend vouchers and manual expenses just lost the appeal

I never tried FA but the 5 minutes a month it takes me to do all this doesn't really motivate me to change until the service is bad or the price gets too high.

If I was running InTouch I would certainly have a secret FA-based skunk project in the background though.

[Fred Bloggs]

Totally. I feel for the old skoolers to a certain extent, as FreeAgent has been a game changer and it must be incredibly difficult to keep up.

It took me a while to take the plunge and move accountants (as I couldn't fault InTouch on service ) but to be honest their tool wasn't up to scratch and having to do my own invoices, dividend vouchers and manual expenses just lost the appeal

All of which and plenty more are a piece of cake using "you know what". I moved from a neanderthal spready based system, what a revelation!

[youngguy]

Bottom line, if there were ever an argument for developing a bespoke accounting portal, it probably died when tools like FreeAgent came along...

Totally. I feel for the old skoolers to a certain extent, as FreeAgent has been a game changer and it must be incredibly difficult to keep up.

It took me a while to take the plunge and move accountants (as I couldn't fault InTouch on service ) but to be honest their tool wasn't up to scratch and having to do my own invoices, dividend vouchers and manual expenses just lost the appeal

[Fred Bloggs]

I'm also not a fan of the changes (to put it mildly). However, TBF, when speaking with In Touch, they clarified that the documentation was merely added, by default, in case it was useful and, beyond the initial admin to register a contract, the auto-generated invoices could be ignored. Certainly, I will be ignoring them, as they are not valid invoices or configurable to be valid invoices for my purposes. I'm hoping the default dividend paperwork can be ignored with similar ease. You can see why they do these things, I suppose - to make life easier for the average contractor, many of whom (I suspect) don't really want to run a business - but, for the rest of us, they actually increase the admin overhead. Bottom line, if there were ever an argument for developing a bespoke accounting portal, it probably died when tools like FreeAgent came along...

^^^^ For sure. ^^^^

[d000hg]

SJD moved me off the FRS for free. Started my delayed purchasing of equipment yesterday

A) and what does SJD charge per month
B) this is not about leaving FRS but reclassification

[jamesbrown]

If you don't enter the invoices then your accountant can't do your VAT return for you. Which is kind of daft.

You're not forced to use the portal at all - just don't expect your accountant to be able to do anything without the information.

I'm also not a fan of the changes (to put it mildly). However, TBF, when speaking with In Touch, they clarified that the documentation was merely added, by default, in case it was useful and, beyond the initial admin to register a contract, the auto-generated invoices could be ignored. Certainly, I will be ignoring them, as they are not valid invoices or configurable to be valid invoices for my purposes. I'm hoping the default dividend paperwork can be ignored with similar ease. You can see why they do these things, I suppose - to make life easier for the average contractor, many of whom (I suspect) don't really want to run a business - but, for the rest of us, they actually increase the admin overhead. Bottom line, if there were ever an argument for developing a bespoke accounting portal, it probably died when tools like FreeAgent came along...

[thelastrosbif]

Is any of this beta tested on users? Like, does anyone who is actually contracting get to use it before its forced upon the rest of us paying customers?

[TheFaQQer]

I'm not sure you're forced to enter invoices in their system at all are you are you?

If you don't enter the invoices then your accountant can't do your VAT return for you. Which is kind of daft.

You're not forced to use the portal at all - just don't expect your accountant to be able to do anything without the information.

[Eirikur]

SJD moved me off the FRS for free. Started my delayed purchasing of equipment yesterday